A leading ground handling company in the country, Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO Aviance), has recorded a major feat with the export of food items to European countries.
The company, under its new subsidiary, NAHCO Food and Beverages Limited, this week broke the jinx of Nigerian food export rejections abroad when it successfully dispatched fresh pepper consignments to Europe.
It will be recalled that more cargo airlines have been departing Nigerian airports without exportable goods, much to the pains of stakeholders, and loss of foreign exchange earnings worth billions of dollars yearly.
The Guardian findings showed that besides mails that topped cargo net export in 2021, the country further slumped in the export of agricultural produce in 2022, following a high rate of rejections and prohibitions overseas over poor packaging, documentation and alleged noncompliance with set standards.
But to change the narrative, NAHCO Aviance commenced the exportation of fresh pepper after being certified by the Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) and after consultation with foreign food standards Agencies.
This feat is the first by any major operator at the airport and comes on the back of a push by the Federal Government for increased export of Nigerian products.
The new export business by the Company is in conjunction with its appointed partners to export the first batch of the exports consisting of high-grade fresh Nigerian pepper.
Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAHCO Aviance, Indranil Gupta, said this development was coming at a time when quite several stakeholders had identified packaging as a major challenge for Nigerian exports.
Gupta added that the Company was doing a lot to assist local producers of agric products in realising their dreams of exporting quality commodities to markets in Europe, America and Asia.
He said: “We appreciate the hard work some of our farmers put into producing their goods. NAHCO is trying to support them to export these products to make these efforts more worthwhile for them. It is also a way of generating scarce foreign exchange for the country, Gupta stated.”
Explaining the process that led to the commencement of the food exports, the Senior Business Development Manager, New Business, NAHCO Aviance, Emmanuel Illah, explained that the project was part of NAHCO’s larger expansion strategy driven by three major objectives: growth, risk reduction, and profitability.
According to Illah, Gupta drove the initiative and has provided support and technical know-how so far.
Disclosing plans by the company to onboard new consignees or off-takers. “The marketing campaign and planned roadshow will take care of this. We plan to expand the product range substantially in due course to accommodate the requests from the diaspora markets,”
Illah said.
